Plans to rid ich, need advice

[asylumdown]

Alright, after that little hiccup that cost me most of my corals, I got back in to the tang game, and while I knew my tank was never 'ich free', I didn't expect the explosion that bringing in these two tangs would cause. I'm worried for their survival at this point (the tangs), but I figure if I'm going in for a penny, I'm going in for the whole damn pound.

I knew my tank had ich in it pretty early on, but since it never seemed to bother anyone beyond a few pesky spots that went away after a day or so, the effort of getting everyone out for treatment never seemed worth it. I added a powder blue and a purple tang this week, and BAM! Now fish that never seemed to be bothered by it are flashing and scratching. The purple tang will probably get over it himseld, but the powder blue won't survive without intervention, so here's my plan:

I don't think putting all my fish in the 40 gallon breeder I have with a crappy canister filter is going to work. They'll die from the cycle, crowding, and inevitable water quality issues long before the display is ich free, so instead I'm going to put my unorthodox sump to good use.

The sump is 4 chambered, with a 20 gallon (approx) skimmer chamber, a 15 gallon (approx) 'frag chamber' (that is currently being used as a place for extra live rock), a 50 gallon "water change chamber" and a 15ish gallon return chamber. The sump is designed so that during water chambers, I can divert the flow directly in to the return chamber, bypassing the first three chambers completely. Normally, I would then use a pump with a hose pointed to a drain to empty the 50 gallon WC chamber, then fill that chamber back up with R/O water, mix salt, then bring the whole sump back online again. To do the ich treatment, I'm going to spread my fish out between the water change chamber and the skimmer chamber, divert the flow so that my display is bypassing most of the sump, and then use the pump that would normally drain the water change chamber as a 'return pump' for my new little isolated system, pumping water from the water change chamber back in to the skimmer chamber. Then I'll drop the salinity in that isolated sump system down to 1.010 and leave my display tank fallow for 8 weeks.

I hope this will be a less stressful process for the fish, as they will have 95ish gallons of system volume, still have a functioning protein skimmer, two heaters, and about 50 pounds of cycled rock to filter the water for them. The auto-doser is also already set up above the frag chamber with a reservoir of carbonate solution to keep the pH up. My display tank will be fishless so it won't need the skimmer, and it will still have it's own heaters (in the return chamber) and the auto-top off system. The only thing I'll need to do manually is add R/O water to the quarantine part of the sump to keep it level, but at this point that's as simple as flipping a switch, since the pump that brings it up for water changes pumps in to the water change chamber anyway.

The only thing I'm concerned about is that the frag chamber with all the rock in it also has about 3 inches of sand for pods to breed in away from the hungry searching of my wrasses. I'm sure there will be a lot of die off from the hypo, but I don't know how much of an issue this will be.

Does anyone have any input, advice, or sees an issue I haven't thought of? Should I take the reactor with GFO that's currently in the water change chamber offline for this, or should I leave it running in the hypo treatment? What about my biopellet reactor? Currently it draws and returns water from the skimmer chamber, but sits in the water change chamber, both of which will be in hypo for 8 weeks. Will the bacteria in it survive the treatment (and help maintain water quality in the quarantine system) or would I be better off moving it's inputs and outputs so that it's still part of the display system?

Also, anyone have any advice on how to get 16 fish out of a 250 gallon tank in less than 2 hours?

[Cal_stir]

Garlic, lots of garlic, fresh garlic in a blender and strain out the juice, make the water smell like garlic.

[George]

whew...that was a long read. After a long day at work, I don't think I have an idea of your sump set up but here are my comments about your questions....

Does anyone have any input, advice, or sees an issue I haven't thought of? Should I take the reactor with GFO that's currently in the water change chamber offline for this, or should I leave it running in the hypo treatment? What about my biopellet reactor? Currently it draws and returns water from the skimmer chamber, but sits in the water change chamber, both of which will be in hypo for 8 weeks. Will the bacteria in it survive the treatment (and help maintain water quality in the quarantine system) or would I be better off moving it's inputs and outputs so that it's still part of the display system?


You don't need GFO, biopellets in your treatment area. Those things deal with nitrate and phosphate which are not harmful to fish unless they are at a very, very high level. I would take them out.
Also get some ammonia badges and prime (or any ammonia binding agents).

Also, anyone have any advice on how to get 16 fish out of a 250 gallon tank in less than 2 hours?
Borrow, steal...a lot of brute trash cans for water change/storage from your fish friends. Drain your tank and get the fish out.
Good luck.

[gregzz4]

Ya, drain your tank, it'll make netting so much easier
Put your rock in the mentioned brute containers while netting

I'd be inclined to keep the skimmer on the DT as you want to keep that tank fed while fallow. Find another skimmer for the hypo if you feel it's needed, but a couple HOB filters will do just fine
Get them into your sump now and seed the foam blocks. If you can't wait for them to seed from the DT water, get some startup stuff to help you over the ammonia cycle

And the mentioned ammonia badge and ammo guard or similar is a must
Lots of water changes the first couple weeks may be needed

Treat the DT like you would if the fish were still in there;
Water changes, testing, etc, and feed whatever corals there are that need it

The only thing I see about your plan that would make me nervous is the chance of contmination from splashing DT water into the hypo section

Lastly, I believe the preferred salinity for hypo is 1.009

A Hyposalinity Treatment Process (http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-diseases-treatments/23131-hyposalinity-treatment-process.html)

Best of luck :smile:

[asylumdown]

whew...that was a long read. After a long day at work, I don't think I have an idea of your sump set up but here are my comments about your questions....

Sometimes I don't even understand it. Trying to explain it to people is even harder...


You don't need GFO, biopellets in your treatment area. Those things deal with nitrate and phosphate which are not harmful to fish unless they are at a very, very high level. I would take them out.
Also get some ammonia badges and prime (or any ammonia binding agents).

Borrow, steal...a lot of brute trash cans for water change/storage from your fish friends. Drain your tank and get the fish out.
Good luck.

I have lots of all of the above. I'll redirect the pellets so they're on the main system and take the GFO offline. More swimming room for the fishes. Thanks!

[asylumdown]

Ya, drain your tank, it'll make netting so much easier
Put your rock in the mentioned brute containers while netting

I'd be inclined to keep the skimmer on the DT as you want to keep that tank fed while fallow. Find another skimmer for the hypo if you feel it's needed, but a couple HOB filters will do just fine
Get them into your sump now and seed the foam blocks. If you can't wait for them to seed from the DT water, get some startup stuff to help you over the ammonia cycle

And the mentioned ammonia badge and ammo guard or similar is a must
Lots of water changes the first couple weeks may be needed

Treat the DT like you would if the fish were still in there;
Water changes, testing, etc, and feed whatever corals there are that need it

The only thing I see about your plan that would make me nervous is the chance of contmination from splashing DT water into the hypo section

Lastly, I believe the preferred salinity for hypo is 1.009

A Hyposalinity Treatment Process (http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-diseases-treatments/23131-hyposalinity-treatment-process.html)

Best of luck :smile:

I got just about everybody out tonight. It required removing every single freaking rock (and I have ALOT of rock), and I still didn't get my leopard wrasse. Little bastard hid himself somewhere in the sand and I couldn't find him. Turned my tank in to mil dragging my hands through the sand trying to find him. Hopefully he re-appears tomorrow and will fall for a trap. On the upside, this gave me the opportunity to remove some base rock that made my tank look too busy, and my new scape is waaaaaaay better. I also got at the two aiptasia my CBB wasn't eating and blow torched them. Soooo satisfying.

My fish are all in the sump now, fully freaking out. I didn't realize that my bengali's were breeding again and got an unfortunate surprise when the male expelled all the eggs in to the net. Poor guys. They're butterfly fish food now.

I'm going to let it run for the night so the skimmer can clear the murk in the tank, then start reducing salinity tomorrow. I'm not worried about splash back, my sump is really deep, and the baffles from one chamber to the next are offset by only half an each between each chamber, so no splashing ever happens in there.

Thanks for the responses. I'm glad I did it this way. The other option was removing all the coral and hypo treating the display tank, but after taking out all that rock (half of which is Marco rock) I realized just how much life is in there already. Some of my Marco rock is just as covered as my real live rock. It would be a crying shame to nuke all that.

[asylumdown]

Alright, so all fish, including the leopard wrasse are in QT and the salinity is 1.010 (I'll drop it to 1.008 in the last week). pH is just over 8

The purple tang has more spots than ever, hopefully they'll fall off in the next 24 hours. The powder blue is back to only eating brine shrimp, so I've stocked up on both vitamin encapsulated brine and brine/spirulina. I'll keep a constant supply of all the different colours of algae sheets in there too. I've set up a filter sock so I can suck up any uneaten food and hopefully keep the water quality high. None of the other fish seem to care at all that they've been moved, everyone else is eating aggressively.

The internet gives conflicting reports on how long I need to leave the DT fallow, some say 8 weeks, some say 6 weeks. I'm leaving town on the 8 week mark for a week so I don't want to put my fish back in the tank that day, only to leave town if there are problems. Will it still be effective if I put them back in at 7 weeks? That will give me a full week of observation with them in the DT.

Also, how long should I leave them in hypo? I theoretically could leave the salinity at 1.010 for 5 weeks, drop to 1.008 for the last week and a half, then slowly start increasing to match the tank, but I don't know if keeping them at that level for that long is safe?

[gregzz4]

The plan is to keep them @ 1.009 for the period. Not 1.008, or 1.010
Read the link I posted as I feel it is the best way to go ....
The timeline is also in the linked thread ...
The DT MUST be fallow for at least 8 weeks, but 9 is preferred
You MUST allow time for the MI to die out. Why would you rush one extra week, when you know it will die in a fallow tank ... ???

The biggest thing you need to do, to follow the hypo treatment, is to take another 4 weeks bringing your fish back to 1.025
You need to keep an eye on them and ensure there are no signs of MI ......
This is the hardest thing for all of us to do as we think it's gone .....

Why would you rush it now, when your DT is MI clean ???

Don't rush this last phase ....

I know it's hard to do, but you NEED to wait just a bit longer .... :smile::smile::smile:

[Madreefer]

Call me ignorant, cocky or just plain crazy. I'm speaking from actual experience here and not something I think is true because I read it online. Garlic is IMO the best thing for ick. I lost a whole tank full of fish to ick around 8 years ago.At the time of the outbreak I tried the hyposalinity and fresh water dips blah blah blah, it just stressed the fish out and the ick got worse. So start restocking my tank right away and back comes the ick. Somebody suggested using garlic and so I thought i'd give it a try.I make my own food so of course I put alot of garlic in it. I also add a couple of drops when the food is defrosting. Anyways, to this day and up to a few months ago I add fish to my tank that are totally covered in ick. I usually get good deals on them if they're infecte with ick. The fish in my tank will start to get a few spots on them but it eventually goes away after a week or two. The said fish that I put in fully recovers. Now I dont recommend people put ick coated fish in their tanks i'm just trying to get the message out that in my experience garlic works great for ick. I've had most of my fish now since the big die off 8 years ago and they are all healthy and in my mind there is no ick in my tank due to the garlic overdosing. There's the debate that garlic is hard on the fishes liver but I see no problems. Sorry for the long post and I hope everything works out ok for your fish. Not trying to create a debate just letting you know of my experiences with ick and garlic use.

[Cal_stir]

I've used hyposalinity several times on QT'ed fish and it works great, however, your display tank must remain fish free for @ 8 weeks to ensure the ich has cycled out. I had a bout in my display tank that I successfully erradicated with garlic, I didn't think it would work but there was no way I was tearing the tank apart to catch all the fish, I now add garlic to the food everyday.

[daniella3d]

Garlic is useless most of the time. You will always see ick come and go in your tank if you only control it with garlic...it will always be there, especially if you keep reintroducing it with new fish. The only way to get rid of ich for good is to treat. What work for you have failed many times for others.

Hyposalinity work very well but it must be done properly with a good refractometer and constantly be under 1.010.

oh and the skimmer does not work in hyposalinity. It does oxygenate the water though, keeping the PH high enough. Best is good cured liverock and there is no ammonia problem usually.



Call me ignorant, cocky or just plain crazy. I'm speaking from actual experience here and not something I think is true because I read it online. Garlic is IMO the best thing for ick. I lost a whole tank full of fish to ick around 8 years ago.At the time of the outbreak I tried the hyposalinity and fresh water dips blah blah blah, it just stressed the fish out and the ick got worse. So start restocking my tank right away and back comes the ick. Somebody suggested using garlic and so I thought i'd give it a try.I make my own food so of course I put alot of garlic in it. I also add a couple of drops when the food is defrosting. Anyways, to this day and up to a few months ago I add fish to my tank that are totally covered in ick. I usually get good deals on them if they're infecte with ick. The fish in my tank will start to get a few spots on them but it eventually goes away after a week or two. The said fish that I put in fully recovers. Now I dont recommend people put ick coated fish in their tanks i'm just trying to get the message out that in my experience garlic works great for ick. I've had most of my fish now since the big die off 8 years ago and they are all healthy and in my mind there is no ick in my tank due to the garlic overdosing. There's the debate that garlic is hard on the fishes liver but I see no problems. Sorry for the long post and I hope everything works out ok for your fish. Not trying to create a debate just letting you know of my experiences with ick and garlic use.

[Madreefer]

Yea ok Daniella i'm a liar. I said I was speaking from experience. Thats the only thing that has worked in my case and i'm pretty confident that it works. I never quoted anyones post and said that they are wrong and their methods do not work so I really dont appreciate you doing it to me. On another note in my predator tank I used tonnes of copper in that tank. And guess what. The 100lb plus of liverock that was in there is now in my reef tank and has been for a number of years. So there goes that theory of using copper "will make those rocks useless forever." There is'nt one rock in my tank that does'nt have a coral growing on it. But thats another topic. But hey what do I know? I'm just a newbie with 12 years of reefing experience with oh lets see, hmm zero crashes. But just the one tank full of fish that died from ick. But no I dont know what i'm talking about so maybe i'll keep my useless experiences to myself. Cheers chicky

[Madreefer]

Wow I'm starting to Hijack. I'm very sorry. Just back to clear something up. I know your OP doesn't need to be told but don't want any newbies to get the wrong impression on copper use. DO NOT USE COPPER IN A REEF TANK. I was just using an example and that's whole different topic and discussion. Once again I'm sorry for the hijack and back on topic.

[naesco]

And I speak from experience too.
Properly administered, Garlic Extreme or any other non diluted garlic extract works for me.

You do not stress your fish in removing them from your tank and stress them further by reducing normal salinity levels.

[daniella3d]

yoe joe...where exactly did I said your method does not work? I said it is useless most of the time, and it is useless most of the time.

I know so many people who have tried this and lost most of their fish trying to avoid the big job of using a QT and treating...

Garlic never worked for me, not even once. Hyposalinity did work well every time. so you may be talking from experience, your own experience. Just read about how many people tried it and failed. It very rarely work, especially in the case of an outburst with weakened fish.

And sure, lets all put tons of copper in our QT with liverock and put that liverock back into the main tank after that...anyone wants to try it? :)

I know what copper can do because I lost tons of coral from Kent contaminated carbon...and no way I would be trying this. Yes eventually it might go away as it will eventually be broken down and bind to organic material and be removed by the skimmer...but how long will that take??? And it also depends very much how porous your liverock was. If it is not porous at all, then the copper will not get inside of it and leach out after that.

There are a lot of factors to keep in mind but I would never suggest anyone to put copper contaminated liverock in their tank with coral....IN fact, I would avoid copper at all cost except in the case of marine velvet.





Yea ok Daniella i'm a liar. I said I was speaking from experience. Thats the only thing that has worked in my case and i'm pretty confident that it works. I never quoted anyones post and said that they are wrong and their methods do not work so I really dont appreciate you doing it to me. On another note in my predator tank I used tonnes of copper in that tank. And guess what. The 100lb plus of liverock that was in there is now in my reef tank and has been for a number of years. So there goes that theory of using copper "will make those rocks useless forever." There is'nt one rock in my tank that does'nt have a coral growing on it. But thats another topic. But hey what do I know? I'm just a newbie with 12 years of reefing experience with oh lets see, hmm zero crashes. But just the one tank full of fish that died from ick. But no I dont know what i'm talking about so maybe i'll keep my useless experiences to myself. Cheers chicky

[asylumdown]

Well, Hypo is finally working, but my lost fish list from the first couple of days is depressing:

Powder blue tang
Cleaner wrasse
labouti wrasse
1 Bengali cardinal (the odd one out, the breeding pair made it)

and both of my firefish, though not from ich, one jumped over the dividing baffle between the low salinity chamber and the normal salinity display when I was doing a water change, I assume his kidneys exploded. The other one vanished yesterday for unknown reasons.

Everyone else is now spot free, eating and behaving normally. It's entirely possible that moving them to the QT system and lowering the salinity pushed already stressed fish over the edge, but by the looks of how bad it got in the first 48 hours after they went in to hypo, I would say I was probably on track to lose everything if I hadn't gotten them out when I did. I read an article that said C. Irritans can increase it's population by 10 times in a week in a closed system, so if there's a stressed fish spouting off tomites by the dozen, the population of theronts can quickly increase to levels that will overwhelm even resistant and healthy fish. I bet it really comes down to a numbers game.

FW dips rid my fish of the majority of their spots at the beginning, but it was too late for the powder blue. I've never seen anything like that before, it was really awful. The cruel irony is that I think the FW dip (which he seemed to tolerate perfectly well in the hours after he received it) actually killed all the parasites on his body, as the next morning he was spot free, but he was also barely breathing and getting blown about by the current either upside down or sideways. I can only imagine what that many tissue ruptures at the same time must have done to his body's internal chemistry.

My biggest problem now is controlling the cycle that's resulted from putting them all in there. I'm doing 30% daily water changes and dosing copious amounts of aqua vitro Alpha, along with a boat load of Stability every day. No one has shown any signs of ammonia poisoning, but yesterday I started detecting nitrites so I'm a little worried.

Once I'm done with the hypo cycle (28 more days to go!), I'm going to spend 3 or 4 days bringing it back up to normal sea water, then initiate a 3 week daily dosing of Seachem paraguard. Seachem assured me in their forum that all of the ingredients break down after about 24 hours in salt water so I don't have to worry about anything leaching back in to my system from the rocks. Once that's done, there will be a two week 'cool down' period of heavy carbon filtering before I return them to the main display.

I know there are ways to control ich in a system through good nutrition and appropriate husbandry, but if you ask me it's a ticking time bomb. After this, there won't be a single fish added to my system who doesn't first get a fresh water dip, then a 3 week treatment of either paraguard or cupramine, then another 2 weeks for observation.

[gregzz4]

Besides your losses ... glad to hear it's going well
Sounds like you have a good plan and you should do just fine

Don't forget that you can use things like Ammo Lock or AmGuard if you have a serious issue
Then you can do a WC without freaking out :smile:

Don't fret the nitrites you are seeing. Just keep more than one foam in the filter and only rinse them ( one per session ) in old tank water ... unless they become so plugged you have to toss them

What I do in my 20g QT ( Aquaclear 50 ) is rinse the bottom foam and exchange it with the top one
You can do either/or and keep rotating them without losing beneficial bacteria

Keep us updated :lol:

[asylumdown]

For posterity's sake, I'll just update this and mention that the hypo didn't work. Or at least my hypo set-up didn't work. After 5 weeks in hypo, and 1.5 weeks in hypo plus paraguard, the purple tang got ich again. I think water from the main display got in to the QT system at some point, and the salinity bumped up a bit.

Fish are all now in the garage getting treated with cupramine.

[sphelps]

With hypo treatments it's my understanding you need a minimum of 4 weeks with no spots then another four weeks with increased salinity to verify the fish is cured. That means holding the fish in hypo for an additional 4 weeks after all ich has disappeared and then another 4 weeks to verify so it's probably minimum 9 week treatment if the fish has ich.

[asylumdown]

yep, that's correct, What I'm saying is that after they had been in hypo for almost 6 weeks (I was extending the hypo period longer so that I could also dose Paraguard in conjunction with hypo at the end), they got ich again. The tang developed spots of ich out of the blue while the salinity was still down in the 1.010 range, after not having had any at all since a few days after the hypo treatment began. So either there was contamination from the DT, which hadn't been fallowed long enough, or the ich had stuck around in the QT system for all that time even with a hypo conditions and the addition of paraguard, or both.

In either case, for me it failed, but there are a bunch of reasons why that could have happened and is not necessarily a problem with the method per se. However, the more reading I do on the interwebs about it, the less I think it's a method that can truly eradicate the parasite for good.

[sphelps]

It's definitely more finicky and not something I would peruse for that reason, 1.010 is too high I think as well, has to be 1.008-1.009 and you'll need something to measure that and be accurate as well which is hard in that range. If the fish are healthy the cupramine is a better option anyway IMO.

[daniella3d]

Your QT was connected to the main tank? how can water from the main tank get into the QT? that should not happen because it will recontaminate the QT and thus the fish. Same way if you put your hands in the main tank and then back into the QT you run the risk of contaminating the fish again.

Hyposalinity work but it must be constantly at 1.009, and if your instrument is out of wack, only one degree can make a difference.

I used hypo a few times and it always worked for me at 100%.

It is imperative to monitor the tank for evaporation so that salinity does not goes yo yo and rise over 1.010.

yep, that's correct, What I'm saying is that after they had been in hypo for almost 6 weeks (I was extending the hypo period longer so that I could also dose Paraguard in conjunction with hypo at the end), they got ich again. The tang developed spots of ich out of the blue while the salinity was still down in the 1.010 range, after not having had any at all since a few days after the hypo treatment began. So either there was contamination from the DT, which hadn't been fallowed long enough, or the ich had stuck around in the QT system for all that time even with a hypo conditions and the addition of paraguard, or both.

In either case, for me it failed, but there are a bunch of reasons why that could have happened and is not necessarily a problem with the method per se. However, the more reading I do on the interwebs about it, the less I think it's a method that can truly eradicate the parasite for good.

[asylumdown]

Your QT was connected to the main tank? how can water from the main tank get into the QT? that should not happen because it will recontaminate the QT and thus the fish. Same way if you put your hands in the main tank and then back into the QT you run the risk of contaminating the fish again.

Hyposalinity work but it must be constantly at 1.009, and if your instrument is out of wack, only one degree can make a difference.

I used hypo a few times and it always worked for me at 100%.

It is imperative to monitor the tank for evaporation so that salinity does not goes yo yo and rise over 1.010.

My Hypo QT system was in my sump. The plumbing under my tank has a massive two way valve on it. When it's turned one way, water enters the skimmer chamber and flows through all 5 chambers of the sump. When I turn it the other way, it cuts off the flow and drops water right before the bubble trap baffle that's in front of the return chamber. Effectively, turning that one valve isolates 3/4 of my sump from the tank above it. Normally I use that valve do do water changes right in the sump, as the largest chamber in the sump is about 50 gallons, but for the hypo process I had the fish in there.

It was an experiment to see if it would work at all, and in my case it didn't. It was too tricky to keep the salinity maintained perfectly because the ATO system was plumbed in to the return chamber, so I had to add water to the QT system by hand. Also, I'm pretty sure there was some splash back from the DT.

I'm sure there are cases where hypo can work, but I didn't have the right set-up for it. Cupramine is pretty much guaranteed to work, and is way more forgiving on my end, though I recognize it's harder on the fish.

[daniella3d]

ok but how will you decontaminate your sump from copper after that? this is very dangerous if it is connected to your main tank as any trace of copper might kill all your corals, and only a tiny amount will do that.

I speak from experience having lost a lot of corals from copper poisoning from carbon. There was not that much of it in my tank, yet I lost a lot of good pieces.

My Hypo QT system was in my sump. The plumbing under my tank has a massive two way valve on it. When it's turned one way, water enters the skimmer chamber and flows through all 5 chambers of the sump. When I turn it the other way, it cuts off the flow and drops water right before the bubble trap baffle that's in front of the return chamber. Effectively, turning that one valve isolates 3/4 of my sump from the tank above it. Normally I use that valve do do water changes right in the sump, as the largest chamber in the sump is about 50 gallons, but for the hypo process I had the fish in there.

It was an experiment to see if it would work at all, and in my case it didn't. It was too tricky to keep the salinity maintained perfectly because the ATO system was plumbed in to the return chamber, so I had to add water to the QT system by hand. Also, I'm pretty sure there was some splash back from the DT.

I'm sure there are cases where hypo can work, but I didn't have the right set-up for it. Cupramine is pretty much guaranteed to work, and is way more forgiving on my end, though I recognize it's harder on the fish.

[asylumdown]

I moved the fish out of the sump to a 40 gallon breeder in the garage for the cupramine treatment. The reason I chose hypo over cupramine to start out with was because I had too many fish for the QT set up I had available. My sump was way bigger and had way more potential for filtration (one of the chambers was loaded with rock), but I wasn't prepared to dose any sort of copper in my sump. When hypo failed, I moved everyone to the 40 gallon to treat with cupramine, even though it's waaaaaaay too small, and am just dealing with the biggest PITA 65% water changes every other day to try and keep the ammonia and nitrite under control. I keep waiting for this cycle to cycle itself out, but I'm not sure if the external marineland canister filter is up to the job of dealing with 4 medium sized reef fish and 4 anthias. I'm also not sure if the ammonia I keep registering at this point is real ammonia, or false positives from the cupramine, which apparently can cause ammonia tests to pop.